white heat

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white heat

n.
1. The temperature or physical condition of a white-hot substance.
2. Intense emotion or excitement: working at white heat to make the deadline.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

white heat

n
1. (General Physics) intense heat or a very high temperature, characterized by emission of white light
2. informal a state of intense excitement or activity
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

white′ heat′


n.
1. an intense heat at which a substance glows with white light.
2. a stage of intense activity or excitement.
[1700–10]
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Noun1.white heat - the hotness of something heated until it turns white
high temperature, hotness, heat - the presence of heat
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
Translations
Mentioned in
References in classic literature
I could see that Montgomery had one of those slow, pertinacious tempers that will warm day after day to a white heat, and never again cool to forgiveness; and I saw too that this quarrel had been some time growing.
I was surprised by lightning in the midst of these luminous sheets, as though they bad been rivulets of lead melted in an ardent furnace or metallic masses brought to a white heat, so that, by force of contrast, certain portions of light appeared to cast a shade in the midst of the general ignition, from which all shade seemed banished.
Thus, in the crucible of shame amidst the white heat of naked truths, the passion that the man had felt for the girl he had considered his social inferior was transmuted into love.
Aye, sir; he must have the white heat for this kind of fine work.
Three days, at white heat, completed his narrative; but when he had copied it carefully, in a large scrawl that was easy to read, he learned from a rhetoric he picked up in the library that there were such things as paragraphs and quotation marks.
All day a merciless sun blazed down into the bay, fierce and pale, as if at white heat. Nothing moved on the land.
The anger boiled a white heat. They ordered him to bed, threatened that he should have no meat at all, and promised him sore beatings for his presumption.
The white heat of emotion had subsided to a gentle glow of contentment conducive to thought.
For, there was Bitzer, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his thin nostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his colourless face more colourless than ever, as if he ran himself into a white heat, when other people ran themselves into a glow.
"Your allusions are lost on me sir," said Bulstrode, with white heat; "the law has no hold on me either through your agency or any other."
"I thought I should find you at a white heat! Don't you know what's going on down below?
With a consciously bad grace and stiff manner, as Wrayburn looked so easily and calmly on, he went out with these words, and the heavy door closed like a furnace-door upon his red and white heats of rage.
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